I look at some of these legacy games and think "How did I ever find this cool?" In those days I was using an Atari 800 (still have it) and later an Atari ST and Amiga. In those days, the 680?? Motorola chips whooped ass on Windows machines. Man, Windows 3.1 sucked. Then the first decent Win OS (Win 95 OSR2) and Pentium class machines changed the whole ball game.

So if I go out in the garage and plug in a Asteroids cart, it's nostalgic ... but really? Castle Wolfenstein? That might hold my attention for 10 seconds. Old video games (even Starcraft 1) cmon' really? How did we ever think that was fun? Legend of Zelda might hold up... maybe... if you were really, really, really bored.

This stuff is interesting for nostalgia, but give me modern toys. I'm jealous of the kids. Toys of all kinds are better and more fun than they ever were. And in adjusted dollars a lot cheaper too,

Machines that couldn't even play an MP3 without choking? Really? No thanks.

Old video games (even Starcraft 1) cmon' really? How did we ever think that was fun?.

Because it was fun and the only thing we had. Hell, I spent hours playing Pong, before there was anything else.

The new stuff is great and no comparison, but what's wrong with nostalgia? I think you need to try harder to rediscover the kid in you. He's still there, only deeply buried. It's fun to journey back for a few hours every now and again.

I think it's looking at nostalgia with rose colored glasses. It's 2013 and 30 year old video games might just remind me I'm an antique too if I needed any reminding. My back is reminding me this morning as usual as I pop a Centrum Silver, 2 ibuprofen and wash it down with a cup of herbal tea.

I think sometimes nostalgia sucks. You had to live through it to get there. I would have a hard time painting a lot of that rosy. The sound sucked. The video sucked. The controllers sucked. Go all the way back and I used to find playing lunar lander on a TTY semi-interesting.

Now, just give me Starcraft II. If I was gonna reminisce, I think I'd have to start with the SNES. Maybe Kirby on a Gameboy? Starfox and Zombies ate My Neighbors for SNES? Legend of Zelda on an Atari or C64? Duke Nukem? But really dude... modern video games are hella cool. I don't feel that nostalgic.

I also used to be able to roll a Centipede arcade machine for as many credits as anyone wanted. The same with Battlezone. Same with Galaga and Galaxian. Not feeling the need in 2013. Own a game. Move on.

Now if you could find me a 1978 Gottlieb Sinbad pinball machine.... we might be talking....

There were pinball machines. This one was the shit. There were fancier contemporaries but I always had a fondness for this one. It was one of the first electronic scored machines, but a throwback to the charm of mechanical machines. No sloppy bumpers. The flipper solenoids were so strong it'd damn near break the glass. Pride in workmanship......

Reminding me. Black Hole 1981. Another one of my favorites. Black Hole wasn't as well constructed. Very cool if you could find a machine that wasn't neglected. Most were.

I think it's looking at nostalgia with rose colored glasses. It's 2013 and 30 year old video games might just remind me I'm an antique too if I needed any reminding. My back is reminding me this morning as usual as I pop a Centrum Silver, 2 ibuprofen and wash it down with a cup of herbal tea.

I think sometimes nostalgia sucks. You had to live through it to get there. I would have a hard time painting a lot of that rosy. The sound sucked. The video sucked. The controllers sucked. Go all the way back and I used to find playing lunar lander on a TTY semi-interesting.

I completely understand what you're saying (my back is acting up today, too). Bad memories are just that and nothing will change them.

But everything wasn't bad. There was fun, now and then. Revisiting those fun times, is still fun (even if it only lasts for a little while). Comparing then and now while playing an old game, spoils it. It all depends on how you chose to look at things, but I agree it's not healthy to deny reality for too long or too often. Fortunately, my wife won't let me do that, she keeps me well grounded in the here and now.

TBH, the skills needed for some of the new stuff frustrates me at times.

You misunderstand, I'm talking about the reality that the new toys are so much better than the ancient that there is no comparison. But I maintain that the old ones were fun in their day.

There's nothing wrong with looking back, just don't go back to what was bad or not working. Embracing one's past lets the present be understood and the future be charted. I believe we all have a role in what happens to us. A major or minor one, but there are always choices. When we later resent or regret a choice made, we need to accept it and try to understand why it was made, after-all it can't be changed so why distress over it. There's always the possibility that the next choice may turn out better, but there are no guarantees in life.

There's life until there isn't and it is what you make it. Make new friends and try to keep the old. Be willing to accept others for who they are and not what you want them to be. If things get to be more than you want to deal with, just walk away. The only person you can control is yourself. No one (especially family) can truly upset me for long, unless I let them.

Anyway, that's how I'm trying to live my life, be it right or wrong. Now I'm usually content and have learned how to let anger and disappointments fade. Each new day is a new day and I now try to start them with a smile (most of the time I do).

For video games from the 80's. Joust was good jokes. The Ultima series. Falcon. I mostly used Atari's 400/800/ST. PC's were kind of weak compared to the Motorola 6502/680X0 machines like the Amiga and the ST. PC's contemporary to the A400 were still running DOS. No real sound chip. No midi port. No player missile graphics chips. The TRS-80 was in there somewhere. The OS was even better on Commodore and Atari machines. Especially the Amiga. It was hands above DOS or Windows 3.1. Windows 3.1 sucked compared to AmigaDos. Windows 3.1 crashed way too much and those multicore Motorola processors were way faster. It would actually multitask and not crash.

Until we get to chips like the DX4/75 and early Pentiums circa 1993-95? I think Win95/OSR2 was really the first Windows I respected.

Sounds like you're doing a hell of a lot of walking back. This is what I meant about choices. Sometimes they are hard. Why associate with people you don't approve of and try to deal with all the BS? Because they're family doesn't grant them a special license. If you get along with your brother and sister, you can see them without their mates being present. If not, you can love and wish them well from a distance. It's their life and you can't do anything about their choices.

You can't pick your relatives and you don't have to put up with their BS. If they don't like it and turn away from you, so what. What are you losing? What's important, your peace of mind or theirs? If that's being selfish, then I'm selfish.

People change. Sometimes for the better and sometimes not. You need to deal with them for who they are, not what they used to be or what they may become. Don't try to ignore or overlook what you truly can't. Walk away or run. If circumstances change you can always reconnect.

I've had to walk away from some family and former friends. It only hurt for a little while. I've been able to reconnect with a few. I found other people I liked being around (with their faults) and who liked being around me (with my faults). But it began with me. I had to put misery, bad times, and bad associations behind me. I had to be honest with myself. I had to accept my good and bad, my strengths and weaknesses. Some of my bad I've tried to work on and some of it I've owned. It's me, what the hell, I'm no saint, nobody is.

I deserve to enjoy the rest of my life, you deserve to enjoy yours. I sometimes think about what if, but I don't dwell on it. I have some guilt over some of my choices, but for the most part my conscience is clear. Thanksgiving is both the happiest and saddest holiday for me.

Until we get to chips like the DX4/75 and early Pentiums circa 1993-95? I think Win95/OSR2 was really the first Windows I respected.

You're focusing on the wrong stuff. Yes those faults existed (especially looking back on it, the shortcomings were huge). But at the time it was what it was and you couldn't miss what you never had (but you could fantasize). Some of that stuff was fun. Fun to play with. Fun to tinker with. Fun to fantasize about what was coming next. Come on, admit it, it was FUN!

You caught my post before I edited about people I know and love/loved. I didn't want to really go that far down memory lane as I edited. I'm just getting a little tired of trying to figure out who is on my side. I'm on theirs.

But wow. I dunno about Castle Wolfenstein. It's old old and if I remember kind of a thumb breaker. I'm not really feeling the love.

One thing that was neat about these old machines is that you could understand everything about them. A lost thing as computers evolved.

One of my favorites was Exodus Ultima 2 (1983). The PC version had no sound track and had to run on a composite monitor. (No VGA/CGA/EGA) The 1986 Atari/Amiga/Mac version had mouse support and better graphics.

IBM was still making business machines, where the rest of the platforms were making consumer machines. Mac was squeezing them out of that business some with a focus on desktop publishing, Amiga and Atari were focused more on a consumer experience including gaming.

I agree, this was a fun little ride down memory lane but I still don't know if it translates to a very interesting gaming experience in 2013.

I agree, this was a fun little ride down memory lane but I still don't know if it translates to a very interesting gaming experience in 2013.

Yes, those old games do not translate. It is not worth it to setup virtual machines or emulators to play them on modern computers. But if a website lets you play them in a browser, it is fun for me to play and reminisce (just about the game) for a half hour or more (now and again).

The Wolfenstein series released 9 or 10 games. Castle Wolfenstein was the 1st. My fav was Return to Castle Wolfenstein, released in 2001 for PC, PlayStation, and Xbox. So, of course, the game engine and graphics were far superior to what was available in 1981 (similar to what current games are to it).

"turgenjev1" resurrected this old thread and it just got me remembering and disappointed that the website linked in the 1st post is no more. Then you jumped in with your 'wet blanket', but in the end you did enjoy thinking about times spent with 'ancient' games.

I never played Return to Castle Wolfenstein, but I sure played a lot of Quake. An open source adaptation of Quake III is available and will run on modern hardware, linux and even Windows 7, including being able to display in 1080p. This game is still fun and still has a multplayer following. Quake III is circa 1999 and ID open sourced the game engine. Volunteers made a pretty good set of maps.

A lot of modern game engines are built on this source code and it remains relevant for the theory of creating 3D game engines.

Rollcage, released in 1999, an arcade-style racing game, is not a realistic simulation like today's car racing games. It featured impossible racing action (driving on walls and ceilings), indestructible cars (with weapons), and spectacular crashes. The graphics still look good. I still have the CD. I installed it on my current computer (last year) and it was running so fast, it was impossible to play. I've been meaning to try one of those apps that are supposed to slow down it's execution rate.

The Doom series, started in 1993, and the Duke Nukem series, started in 1991, consumed a ton of my time. I remember going to work groggy after staying up all night killing 'bad guys' and searching for hidden items (mostly better weapons).

A lot of old games can be gotten for $6 or less from GOG.com. Many come with 'wrappers' so that they can be easily installed and played on modern computers.

I had a friend who was an engineer at Bally/Midway Manufacturing. He left town after the company folded. His basement was packed with video arcade and pinball machines (no quarters needed, just bring beer). A few of us would spend whole weekends at his house. I still have a table model of Ms Pac-Man he gave me (in my basement gathering cobwebs).

Yes, I know about MAME. I was using it 15 to 20 years ago when my interest in playing the old arcade games on any kind of regular basis was much greater than now. I was a big fan of Galaxian and wanted to play that on my computer as close to the real game play as possible, which lead me to MAME.

I remember... 1982 I had become 16, and I saw similar games in the big stores...

Other families had the newest TVs and games, but not my family. My family had enough incomes, we made family journeys, the other part of the money was saved up. This money is gone now, also because of the care costs for both parents. Although we weren't poor, we had to live in a leased apartment, and it seems, I was never able to participate in the life like many other people.

Sure, 1999 Frank had bought his first PC (Windows 95), later his second PC (Windows 98). We were still without internet until 2004 (then the next PC with Windows XP came). I didn't see an MP3, but we had bought a few games from Pearl, also the very interesting "Creatures", it was a scientific game. Later other software was bought to write documents and later for para-experiments and to work on the website Transwelten, a website for parasciences:http://www.transwelten.de/

In that time my scientific side had dominated, 2009 my artistic side began to dominate again. 2009 I bought an own PC (2007 Frank had bought a new PC). Both PCs have Windows Vista. 2011 I bought my notebook (Windows 7). On my PC I began to create my music-videos with Windows Movie Maker, and I also worked with Terragen. I didn't know yet, that my NVDIA grapic card has much more abtlities, until 22nd July 2010, after I had connected also with PC via LAN cable. Many music-platforms require MP3, and I converted my first WAV-files to upload my own music. I am in contact with many artist-colleages in these platforms.

I came in touch with very beautiful things very late, but I enjoyed them very perfectly in the last 3 years. I still know, I have missed so many other things, and I am not 20 anymore. With my 47 years I am very old, too old, and I should enter into the retirement soon...

There was another arcade game I liked. Vector graphics. You played in a polygonal shaped tube shooting targets and you'd warp to the next level on clearing it. The control was a knob you'd spin to move your blaster.

Don't remember.

In the late 70's I was working in a pizza parlor that was almost an arcade. On my break, I'd rack up credits for people. Pizza was pretty good. There was a friend of mine Bob. Between Bob and I we'd make sure there were a lot of credits for everybody. Brian was pretty good too. Between the three of us, nobody bought Centipede. The machine usually had 50 credits all the time. Sometimes the boss would pay us to play Centipede, Asteroids and (me) pinball. Good will giving out free games to the customers.

Oh, also I myself remember some arcades. 1980 I discovered them the first time. But teenagers, who are younger than 18, are not allowed to visit such arcades. There is a law in Germany, which prohibits that. But also the big cinemas had at least 1 slot, mostly with space games in the style of Star Wars.

As a teenager I had missed such games at home. Only the other teenagers in my class had such games, but not I myself, and I didn't have a very good contact with the other teenagers...